The Happy Mariners Read online

  The Happy Mariners

  by

  Gerald Bullett

  TO

  MY FRIEND

  MRS MURPHY

  AND

  HER MOTHER

  Contents

  1. MAP OF THE ISLAND

  2. THE MAN FROM THE SEA

  3. THE BOTTLE BREAKS

  4. GETTING ABOARD

  5. THE VOYAGE BEGINS

  6. DANGER BELOW

  7. THE STORM

  8. SKULL AND CROSSBONES

  9. CAPTAIN BLACKHEART

  10. THE ISLAND OF THE MAP

  11. NIGHT IN THE FOREST

  12. A PRETTY PAIR OF PIRATES

  13. PLANS AND STRATAGEMS

  14. THE FOREST OF FAIRY TALES

  15. FURIOUS FANDY

  16. SPYING OUT THE LAND

  17. ATTACK ON THE LOG-CABIN

  18. ELIZABETH’S FOOTPRINTS

  19. QUEEN OF THE CANNIBALS

  20. CAKE AND CUCKOO

  21. HOME TO TEA

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter 1

  Map of the Island

  The adventure really began on Saturday afternoon, but the story must begin with the day before, when, at about half-past three, the four young Robinsons stood at the pond’s edge admiring their island, while the cat called Fandy sat a few yards away languidly washing his face. The pond, a round one, was about twelve feet in diameter; and the island in the middle of it was only just about big enough for one boy to stand on. This pleasant brickfield, of which the pond and the island were the most exciting features, adjoined the Robinsons’ back-garden and was reached by means of a little door in the fence. There was scaffolding too in the field, and a huge stack of new bricks. The Robinsons’ house, one of a long row, was visible from where they now stood; and in the opposite direction, a mile or two away, rose the glittering dome of the Crystal Palace. But they had better things to do than look at that: for the moment it was this island that occupied their thoughts.

  ‘It’s a jolly good island,’ said Guy. ‘If it were a little bigger we might build a raft and sail out to it.’

  ‘There’s treasure hidden on that island, and I shouldn’t wonder.’ It was Rex, the eldest, who made this remark. He had just been reading Treasure Island and was making very free with some of Long John Silver’s expressions.

  ‘Let’s make a map of the island,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘and mark the place where the treasure is, and put false clues all over it to deceive the enemy. Shall we?’

  ‘Let me do it,’ Martin pleaded, ‘with my paints.’

  Only Fandy the cat had nothing to say. He went on washing his face without a word.

  There were, you will have observed, four children; and they were arranged like this:

  Rex, 12

  Guy and Elizabeth, 10½ (each)

  Martin, 7.

  They were dark-haired, all four of them, but Rex was the darkest and slimmest of the boys. Being twelve, he knew quite a lot, and Elizabeth sometimes called him ‘bossy’, but it was more teasing on his part than anything else. Guy, the second brother, was rather plump and impulsive; and he was very fond of his twin-sister Elizabeth. The chief thing to remember about Elizabeth, who was a quiet thoughtful one, very cool and very dark, is that she would never answer if you called her Lizzie or Betty or Lisbeth, or anything but her own beautiful name. As for Martin, he was only just seven, and you know what that means. It means that whenever they all went adventuring in the fields young Martin had to be taken special care of. Martin’s particular friend was the yellow cat, Fandy, who would purr louder for him than for anybody else. They were a very happy and united family; the children didn’t quarrel much, and the parents, so far as I know, didn’t quarrel at all. Mr Robinson thought Mrs Robinson quite nice, as indeed she was; and Mrs Robinson never wearied of telling the children what a good and clever father they had chosen.

  ‘That’s a good idea of yours, Elizabeth, about a map,’ said Rex. ‘I vote we go and do it now, before tea-time.’

  Less than five minutes later they were all gathered round their own particular table, which stood in the play-room. Martin, having made several attractive messes with his paints on a piece of paper, had at last consented to let Elizabeth do the painting for him. Rex drew the map, with Guy’s help, and Elizabeth stood ready, brush in hand, to paint in the false clues.

  ‘There must be a creek,’ said Guy.

  ‘There’ll be lots of creeks, I expect,’ answered Rex. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘Yes, but there must be a special creek called Gunpowder Creek.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I think there would be on an island like this, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Rex. ‘And the treasure is in a black oak chest, of course, and it’s buried just here.’ The island had by now assumed roughly the shape of a crouching leopard, and Rex’s forefinger pointed at a spot not far from where the beast’s left ear would have been. ‘It’s here, buried four fathoms deep.’

  ‘What’s four fathoms mean?’ asked Martin.

  ‘It means where the treasure is buried,’ answered Rex.

  ‘But how deep is it?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Rex, ‘I don’t quite know, not exactly. But we shall know when we come to dig for the treasure, shan’t we?’

  ‘Put some trees in,’ suggested Guy. ‘And a log-cabin or something. There’ll be a forest there, sure to be, with heaps of wild animals in it. We shall have to sleep in a ring of fire the first night; p’r’aps longer. Depends how long we take to build the log-cabin.’

  On occasion Martin could beat them all at the pretence game, but this time he was deceived into asking innocently: ‘When are we going to build it? And where shall we get the planks and things from?’

  Elizabeth pointed to a group of trees that Rex was busy sketching into the map. ‘We shall cut down some of those trees, don’t you see? But of course we’ve got to get to the island first.’

  ‘Shall we swim there, or paddle?’

  ‘We shall go,’ said Elizabeth, ‘in a huge and lovely ship with brown sails. It will take days and days to get there, and …’

  ‘Will Fandy come with us?’

  ‘He’d rather stay at home, I expect.’ Martin’s face fell. ‘But you shall come, Martin, if you’re good.’

  ‘There! That’s a start anyhow!’ exclaimed Rex in a highly satisfied tone. ‘Now you can do your bit, Elizabeth, if you like.’

  So Elizabeth put in the green footprints, a long trail of them leading right past the treasure, and then stood back to examine the total effect.

  ‘Of course it’s not finished yet,’ Rex hastily reminded her. ‘I’ve got to put rivers and things in.’

  ‘Still it’s nice, isn’t it?’ said Elizabeth. ‘Gunpowder Creek’s specially nice.’

  ‘That’s only because precious Guy thought of it,’ sneered Rex.

  ‘Precious yourself!’ retorted Guy, giving his brother a punch.

  ‘Now, young Guy …!’

  ‘And that big bay at the back of the leopard’s neck,’ went on Elizabeth, paying no attention to the quarrel, ‘that’s Cannibal Bay. There’s sure to be cannibals on the island.’

  ‘Or if not, there soon will be,’ amended Guy. ‘They’ll come in long canoes and land there…’

  ‘Right across the middle of him,’ announced Rex, ‘we’ll have a range of mountains.’ He became busy with his pen again.

  ‘Will there be any pirates, do you think?’ asked Martin anxiously.

  ‘Certainly there will,’ said Guy.

  Rex agreed that pirates was a good idea. That was the pleasant thing about Rex; even though he was the eldest he was never above taking suggestions from the others
, and they all found it impossible to be cross with him for many minutes together. ‘We’ll put the pirates the other side of the mountains.’ And he did so, as you will see if you look at the map. ‘We don’t want ’em too near. They might be troublesome.’

  ‘But I want to see the pirates,’ complained Martin.

  ‘Well, see them, my lamb,’ said Rex loftily. ‘There they are!’

  ‘But I want to see them when we’re on the island,’ Martin explained.

  Guy said he did too. ‘And if it’s a big island…’

  ‘Twenty miles long at least,’ put in Rex.

  ‘… if it’s a big island, and we have the log-cabin here, on the leopard’s nose, the pirates’ll be miles away.’

  ‘When you’re a bit older,’ remarked Rex, ‘you’ll learn that pirates aren’t such pleasant fellows to have about the place.’

  ‘Oh stow that!’ Guy meant the when-you’re-a-bit-older part. ‘It’s all cribbed from father, anyhow’.

  Rex looked a little sheepish, but he answered boldly enough: ‘What if it is!’

  ‘Oh I do want a pirate,’ Martin said. ‘Can’t I have just one, Rex, near where the thingummy is?’

  Rex grinned. ‘All right!’ he agreed generously. ‘Here, I’ll put him on this bit of land to the east of Gunpowder Creek. A nice big pirate he is, and all for you, Martin. See, there’s blood on his cutlass. He’s the captain of them all.’

  Martin’s eyes shone. ‘How lovely! Does he wallop the others when they’re bad?’

  ‘No, when they’re good,’ laughed Guy. ‘Pirates have to be bad. That’s what they’re there for. It’s only when they’re good that they have to be walloped. Isn’t it, Elizabeth?’

  ‘He must have got lost, that pirate captain,’ said Martin. ‘I say, he’ll have a job getting across those mountains, won’t he?’

  At this moment Nancy the maid came to say that tea was ready.

  ‘Ready and waiting,’ said she. ‘And your Pa’s come home early from business. So you must all try to behave nicely for once.’

  Chapter 2

  The Man from the Sea

  They were still having tea when the strange sailor came, and all four crowded to the window to look at him. He was a squat tough-looking fellow about the body, but his hands were of the lean and sinewy sort, and his face was the colour of new kid gloves. Gleaming black hair clustered in ringlets about his ears.

  ‘What queer clothes!’ said Elizabeth. ‘And look at his ear-rings!’

  He was standing at the back door, and Nancy the housemaid was asking him what he wanted. The children couldn’t hear what was being said, but they could guess. The sailor was smiling at Nancy in a coaxing fashion; and Nancy, whose eyes were bright with suspicion, had that air of stand-no-nonsense which they all knew so well—especially Martin, who had it with his supper nearly every night.

  Mrs Robinson called them back to the tea-table. ‘It’s not very polite to stare,’ she said. ‘And you haven’t finished your teas, have you?’

  ‘Coming, mummy,’ said Rex. ‘Coming, mummy,’ echoed Guy and Elizabeth. And even Martin, his nose flattened against the window-pane, absently murmured ‘Coming.’

  But they lingered long enough to see Nancy shut the door upon the sailor, and would perhaps not have come away from the window even then had not Nancy herself at that moment entered the room. Everybody looked at her questioningly. Even Mrs Robinson seemed to be a little excited; there was a pretty flush in her cheeks and her eyes were big.

  ‘Who is it, Nancy?’

  ‘It’s a strange man, m’m. I don’t like the looks of him.’

  ‘We do,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We like him very much. Don’t we, Guy?’

  ‘Bet your life,’ said Guy.

  Mr Robinson interrupted. ‘Be quiet, every one! What does the fellow want, Nancy?’

  But Nancy was gazing curiously at Elizabeth. ‘Now it’s funny that you should say that, Miss Elizabeth. Very funny indeed, that is.’ They all hung on her words, so mysterious was her manner. ‘Because, you see,’ she went on, ‘it’s Miss Elizabeth herself that he’s asking to see.’

  ‘Me!’ exclaimed Elizabeth.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ exclaimed Rex and Guy.

  ‘Now, however did he know …’ began their mother.

  ‘He’s got,’ said Nancy, ‘a ship in a bottle, or some such contraption, and he says it’s for the Lady Elizabeth.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes were starry with delight. Rex said disdainfully: ‘What’s a girl want with ships?’ But, before she had time to be hurt or indignant with Rex, Guy put in quickly: ‘Come on, Elizabeth. Let’s go and see.’

  ‘Wait a moment, my dears,’ said Mrs Robinson. ‘I’ll go first.’

  She said it as though she meant it, so they had to obey. But it was a hard job to sit still, and pretend to eat bread and butter like good children, while just round the corner was that queer man from the sea with his splendid ship, and his curled hair, and his ear-rings, and his brown leathery face; and it was a great relief to their pent-up feelings when Mrs Robinson came back.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Robinson, ‘he’s got a ship there in a bottle. It’s the loveliest thing. He says it’s a Spanish caravel called the Resmiranda, and he declares that Elizabeth is to have it. He wouldn’t even let me take it in my hand. No one but Elizabeth will do.’

  She smiled in a puzzled way; and Mr Robinson, catching her glance, hastily swallowed what remained in his teacup, and rose. ‘I suppose,’ he said wearily, ‘I must look into this.’

  But he was too late; for already Elizabeth, closely followed by Guy, and less closely by Rex, with Martin clinging to his sleeve, had darted out of the room.

  ‘And where be the Lady Elizabeth?’ said the man from the sea.

  His accent was strongly rustic, and his appearance, now that they could see him plainly, was even more outlandish than before. But they had no eyes to spare for him, being spellbound by the beauty of the burden that he carried in his arms. She was a two-masted vessel, with four brown sails; and, pent in a bottle though she was (how she had got there was indeed a mystery), the children could already in fancy see those sails bellying in the wind, could already taste the brine on their lips and feel, pulsing in their ears, the rhythm of high seas.

  ‘Where be the Lady Elizabeth?’ repeated the seaman in a high chanting tone.

  Guy nudged his sister. ‘My name is Elizabeth,’ she ventured.

  She spoke in so small a voice that Guy nudged her again. ‘Speak up, silly!’ But the seaman had heard, and had turned his eyes upon her. They were smallish eyes, with a hint of green in their brown, and a suggestion of half-blindness that was a little terrifying. He could evidently see Elizabeth, however; and he appeared to like what he saw, for his face became creased in genial wrinkles that gathered round his eyes like the rays of the sun in an old picture-book.

  ‘Then, mistress,’ he said, ‘this ship be thine, by right of conquest. She’s the Resmiranda, taken from the Spaniards in a battle I knows on by a master I sailed under. And there’s more in her, mark ’ee, than meets the eye.’

  ‘Hurrah!’ piped Martin. He thought this was the most magnificent game that he had ever seen played. But Rex and Guy and Elizabeth could only stare in silence; they were awe-struck, especially Elizabeth, who, for some reason she couldn’t have explained, almost wanted to cry. She felt this more than ever when the seaman suddenly went down upon one knee and with his two hands thrust the treasure towards her.

  ‘Am I really to have it?’ she asked. It seemed almost like cheating, for she could hardly believe that this beautiful thing was indeed for her. ‘I’m not really grown-up, you know; I’m only ten and a half,’ she added. But, in spite of herself, she held out her arms, and the seaman, having yielded to her his precious burden, stood up straight again, his face shining with happiness.

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ said Elizabeth.

  Four pairs of young eyes were fixed upon the lovely Resmiranda; and when, the moment afterwards, they looked u
p—

  ‘Where is he?’ exclaimed Guy. ‘I didn’t hear him go, did you?’

  No one had seen or heard him go. But he was gone. And even when they ran out into the road they could see no sign of him.

  Chapter 3

  The Bottle Breaks

  Of all four, Martin alone seemed anxious to talk about the strange man from the sea; the others fought shy of the subject, for no reason that any one of them could have explained. I think they felt the whole affair to be a little more queer than was quite comfortable, it being perhaps in their minds that a man who could so suddenly vanish might at any moment reappear when you least expected or wanted him. Anyhow, it all needed a good deal of thinking out, and they were afraid to confess to each other, by word or by look, how deep an impression had been made on them. This hiding of their feelings was not altogether successful, however, because each one of them was aware of having found the others out; each was aware—secretly, as he thought, that is without knowing that the others knew—of the excitement that vibrated among them.

  When they all trooped back into the kitchen, Elizabeth ran at once to her mother, who put the bottled ship on the mantelpiece so that it might be out of danger. Elizabeth’s eyes were still alight with pleasure, but she had not yet recovered the use of her tongue. For her thoughts had already gone a-voyaging. In fancy she sailed under a copper sky down a broad river that ran through the dark sleeping heart of a forest; she saw panthers gliding among the trees, and monkeys leaping from branch to branch pelting each other with coconuts, and scarlet parrots that started up screaming at her ship’s approach.

  Looking across the tea-table she caught Guy’s eye upon her and exchanged with him a smile of understanding.

  Meanwhile young Martin was strutting round the room, saying, half to himself: ‘There’s more in her, mark ’ee, than meets the eye!’ But nobody paid him much attention; least of all Rex, who was listening, enthralled, to a discourse on the art of navigation from his father.

  Mr Robinson, who had frequently taken the family for a row round the Crystal Palace lake, knew a great deal about ships and seafaring, treasure islands, buccaneering, sea-fights, storms, pirates, being marooned, Flint’s fist, pieces of eight, and the rest of it. Set talking by his admiration of the Resmiranda, he kept it up all the evening, to everybody’s satisfaction; and it was not until the afternoon of the next day, which was Saturday, that Rex had an opportunity of unfolding his great plan to Guy and Elizabeth. They were in the play-room together. The parents were elsewhere, and Martin was nowhere to be seen, so a fellow could speak his mind freely. It wasn’t that Martin was a tale-bearer: it was simply that, being so young, he sometimes failed to understand the importance of holding his tongue.